Flow and Free Rhythm in Talib Kweli

Abstract

Throughout his career, Talib Kweli has been called an “off-beat rapper.” Despite that highly derogatory comment, this chapter connects Kweli’s non-alignment with the underlying beat to earlier Afro-diasporic rhythmic practices. Kweli’s voice moves away from the beat through four distinct processes: phase shifting, swinging, tempo shifting, and deceleration. The last of these, while a hallmark of the rhythm of speech, has little relationship to the rhythm of music with a mechanically regulated beat. By documenting the non-alignment between flow and beat in a particular track (“Get By”), the chapter shows the novel way in which Kweli inserts rupture into the flows of his verses, extending the aesthetic values of hip hop into the rhythms of his flow itself.